


don't let me go (even if it hurts)

by JustClem



Series: She Lives, and She Lies [2]
Category: Life Is Strange (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Light Angst, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sad, Self-Hatred, amberprice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-23
Updated: 2019-08-23
Packaged: 2020-08-19 02:27:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20202223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JustClem/pseuds/JustClem
Summary: Rachel tries to cope.Rachel can't cope.Chloe tries to help.There's nothing she can do to help.





	don't let me go (even if it hurts)

**Author's Note:**

> Yay! Turns out I did make it into a series!
> 
> And by that I mean a three-shot!
> 
> I wrote both the second part (which is this) and the last one on my History book, all in one go. It's honestly kind of fun in a way I wasn't expecting. The casualness in which I wrote makes this all the better.

****Rachel wakes up to yelling. Chloe, yelling to whoever is on the other side of the call. 

“No, David. Fuck. She didn’t- yes, I’m sure! She wouldn’t- I know she wouldn’t!” A pause. Then, the smashing of a fist to a wooden frame. “Because I know Rachel, and she’d never try anything dangerous! She parties a lot, yes, but that doesn’t-” A frustrated, muffled, and incoherent yell. “You know what, David?! This isn’t even the main issue!”

Chloe’s never called her douche of a stepfather by his real name. Not even that time where she needed his help to bust her pretty ass out of jail for vandalising the high and mighty statue of the powerful Presscott; Nathan’s great, great-

Nathan…

Nathan, acting unusually nice, offering to be an outlet for her venting, listening as she rants about how weird Chloe’s acting recently, and how badly she wants to leave this shithole of a town. 

Nathan, promising to take her back to her room safely when a great wave of dizziness hits her head. 

_Nathan, not taking her back to her room._

Blackness. Blankness. Fatigue. Feverishness. Eeriness. 

The inability to scream when her mouth was open. 

The inability to move when her body was unrestrained. 

The inability to see when her eyes stared unblinkingly.

“-chel! Rachel! Hey!”

Rachel pushes Nathan off of her. She jolts up, and can’t think of a reason why she’s on a bed, and why her surroundings are familiar. She wobbles on her feet. Clearly, what he’s given her hasn’t worn off yet. 

Nathan is persistent. It shows in how his hands latch onto hers - with a grip weaker than she thought it would be - before she can take a step.

Rachel pulls her hand away, and, with a scream, slaps him in the face. Hard.

Only, it’s not Nathan who receives the hit.

It’s not Nathan who stumbles, hits his thigh on the desk, and falls down.

It’s not Nathan who hisses and clutches his face tenderly, rubbing at where a red spot is already forming.

“Chloe!” Rachel sobs - since when did she start crying? - and falls on her knees. “No, no, no. I’m sorry, Chloe. I’m so, so sorry.”

“It’s-” A withering sigh as Chloe attempts to regain her senses. “It’s fine, Rach.”

“No, it’s not!”

Rachel is a quivering, broken mess, and usually, she’d never let Chloe nor anyone see her like this. (Especially not Chloe.) But right now, she’s too shattered to care about the prospect of ‘usually’, like it ever mattered in the first place. Like anything ever mattered. Anything besides Chloe.

“I hurt you,” Rachel says, and sobs again at how truthful of a statement it was. “I hurt you, and I’m sorry. It’s not okay. It never was. I keep hurting you, over and over-”

“Rachel-”

“And it’s not like I want to hurt you.” Rachel shakes her head vehemently. “It’s not. I never wanted that. Never wanted to hurt you. Never. I care about you. Please don’t- Please don’t think otherwise-”

“Of course not…”

“I don’t-” A gulp in an attempt to dispel the heaviness in her throat. “I don’t think I can stand you thinking that I hate you-”

“C’mere, Rach.”

And like a lost puppy, Rachel obliges. She throws herself at Chloe and lets her long, thin arms pretend they’re sturdy enough to support her. 

Everything is static white noise.

Chloe speaks a lot of things. Rachel doesn’t really listen. It’s a bunch of “everything’s going to be okay”s and “don’t worry”s. Basically bullshit. 

One of her words sticks out more than the rest. The white noise slowly fades out in a high-pitched ringing, and Chloe’s voice, breaking and pretending not to be breaking, replaces it.

“Don’t worry about hurting me too much, yeah? I’m strong. I can handle myself fucking splendidly.”

Rachel whimpers. Hearing Chloe say that hurts. She shakes her head and pulls Chloe closer. “No, Chlo-” A hiccup. “Chloe, no. Just- no.”

If Chloe notices her distress, then she chooses not to comment on it. She chuckles instead, and leans forward, back, forward, and so forth. Rockabye the baby, rockabye.

“It’s true, Rachel. You think you bite like a lion, but really, you’re just a kitten, you cutie.”

Chloe Price, the horrible liar.

Rachel closes her eyes and sighs, letting Chloe gather her bearings before gathering her, standing up with an exhausted mess in her arms.

She should complain and say that she can walk just fine, she has legs, thank you very much. Instead, she just wonders why she’s this tired when she’s only just woken up.

“Don’t lie to me, Chloe. I’ve hurt you. It’s true.”

“I’m not lying.”

Rachel wants to object, say that she is lying, but sleep is already kidnapping her from the land of the living.

…

“I need a shower.”

Rachel doesn’t move her eyes from that one spot on the floor. The itsy-bitsy crack among the dozens, and the remnants of what once must’ve been a spill of a drink. 

She doesn’t look away, not even to gauge Chloe’s reaction.

Chloe, who’s been alternating between going outside and out of earshot and tending to her needs.

Chloe, who doesn’t complain or snap at her or look like she has better things to do. 

Chloe, who she needs to change for.

Rachel stands up, regrets it due to the nausea and the fogginess in her mind that won’t go away, and pretends that she doesn’t. She walks on a line. No sway of the hips, no small comments, and no flirtatious winks, nothing. It’s all mechanic. She doesn’t quite hear Chloe calling out for her, but a part of her notices so. 

She doesn’t look at the mirror. She’s always loved looking at the mirror, admiring the girl that always greets her confidently at the other end of it. 

Now the very notion sickens her.

She doesn’t want to do it. She’s afraid to see what that girl looks like now. She must look filthy, slimy, gross, broken, disgusting. She must look weak and pathetic. 

Rachel keeps scrubbing. She never feels clean. She scrubs so hard she bleeds. And even then she never stops scrubbing. Not after the water’s cold. Not after Chloe knocks and says, “Rachel? Are you okay in there?”

Rachel can picture her outside, one hand hiding in the pocket of her jeans while the other, clenched into a fist, hovers by the door.

Chloe leans, and Chloe hunches. Her form is never straight, never equal. She thinks it makes her invisible. It only draws everyone’s eyes towards her. 

Rachel can picture it; calloused hands with soft pads and softer nails, and knuckles with echoes of scraps from all her history of defying the expected, brushing faintly against the withering wooden door.

She can picture it well.

“No, Chloe. I’m fine.”

Rachel can see her clicking her tongue, hesitant. “It’s just that it’s almost been forty minutes. I thought something happened.”

“I’m fine.”

And Rachel can see her, worrying even more. Her heavy footsteps bellow - even without boots they’re loud - as Chloe walks away, only to pause, walk back, pause again to try and think of the best way to show that she will always be there for her, only to say, “I put your clothes next to the doorstep. You can use my towel.”

…

Chloe sees the red of her skin - failed attempts of cleansing herself from what he did, from the truth - and she says nothing. 

(It’s a good thing, really. Rachel would break all over again if she did.)

…

Chloe is waiting. She’s waiting for her to tell her who ‘did it’ to her, and Rachel doesn’t know how to tell her that her closest friend, the rich and snobbiest of the rich and the snobby did this to her after she told him of how much she despised Chloe, and thanked him for being such a good friend, unlike Chloe.

But Chloe is waiting. She hates silence. Rachel can tell. She’s never used to it, and doesn’t know what to do with it. So Rachel sweeps the silence away, and not because she isn’t comfortable with it.

“What did Joyce say?”

Chloe flinches, startled that Rachel has shooed away the dreaded silence. 

Now, she looks as though she prefers it.

Chloe Price, always changing her mind.

“Do you want me to be nice or do you want me to be brutal?”

“I want you to be real.” Chloe sighs. Did she really expect anything else?

“Brutally real, then.” She looks as though she were about to pour alcohol on Rachel’s wound. She knows it’s necessary, but she doesn’t like that she’s about to hurt Rachel, even if it isn’t her fault. “Mom doesn’t believe us. David doesn’t either, that douchebag.” Chloe looks like she’s finished, but Rachel keeps looking at her, expecting, so Chloe clears her throat. “They think we’re doing this for attention. That, or you partied too hard.”

Rachel stares blankly. She wants to laugh. “Oh, so nothing’s changed.” Chloe looks away in shame she shouldn’t feel. Rachel’s vision blurs as she smiles sadly, more for Chloe than herself. She bumps against Chloe’s shoulder, earning a glance. “It’s us against the world, Price.”

Chloe’s head snaps towards her. She looks stricken, flabbergasted. Her look of surprise dims down, turning into something softer, warmer. It makes Rachel wonder what she’s done to deserve an angel as special as her.

“Yeah.” Chloe nods in agreement, looking younger than she has any right to be. “You and me, we’re gonna burn this shitty town to the ground.”

“Only one town?” Rachel snorts. “Lame.”

“Really?” Chloe tilts her chin up. She looks absolutely cocky, and absolutely adorable. “How about one whole America?”

“How about one whole world?”

The best part is, she can imagine it. Her and Chloe, destroying the world because of how much they hate it. Rachel is sure she would do it, if given the chance.

Chloe suggests they tell James Amber about it. Rachel shuts her up quickly. It doesn’t matter if he’s the DA, Rachel would rather let herself get kidnapped and almost raped again before she asks him for help.

…

Rachel wonders if it’s rape.

It’s not like her memory is at its finest. Her clothes were still intact. Or maybe it’s because she escaped before he could tear it off of her.

Rachel remembers cameras. And an artist’s eyes. 

Rachel remembers someone helping her escape.

…

She’s lying down, burying her face in Chloe’s chest. She’s never felt so small. Chloe’s never felt more like home. (Chloe _ is _home.) 

“Chloe?” 

“Hm?”

“I want to leave. Right now.” Rachel is detached from her words, from herself. Maybe that’s why it’s so easy for her to say these things. “I can’t stand it here anymore. If you don’t want to leave, that’s fine. But I’ll do it. I’ll go. I will go.”

Rachel expects anger, or sadness, or disbelief.

She’s a fool to expect any of that.

A somber chuckle. “Do you seriously think I’ll let you leave alone?”

Rachel thinks of Chloe’s friends, Chloe’s family, Chloe’s life.

She thinks about how she’ll abandon it. How they’ll both abandon it. Abandon everything they know, everything they’ve been building.

For once, Chloe Price isn’t the one being abandoned.

For once, Rachel Amber knows what love is.

They leave.

**Author's Note:**

> One thing I love about Amberprice is how both Chloe AND Rachel calls each other angels. Like, Rachel means it in a more "guardian angel" way, and how Chloe saved her life, but Chloe means it in a more "holy shit you are so beautiful fuck you" way. It's kind of cute, really.


End file.
